Record Rack: The Rolling Stones and the Animals (Reissues)

Not Fade Away After Half a Century

 By Brian Arsenault

Vinylphiles rejoice.  If you still have a vinyl player that turns at 45 revolutions per minute, ABKCO has a very special treat indeed for you in honor of Record Store Day this Saturday (April 20).  Remarkably, there are 700 independent record stores still around in the USA and most still sell vinyl as well as CDs. On Saturday, you can pick up some Rolling Stones and Animals recordings previously issued only in the UK in 1964 and ‘65.

I wonder how many people alive today have never even seen a 45 let alone listened to one. I’m betting most under 50 – 55.  And an extended play (EP) mono 45? Extraordinary.

But even if the recording arcana bores ya, the music won’t, especially the Stones early work.

 The Rolling Stones

Five by Five (Reissue by ABKCO Music and Records)

How genuine these kids played, working to stay true to the rhythm and blues of their idols.  This was before the Stones became “the world’s greatest rock n roll band,” before Brian Jones died after alienating just about everybody else in the group, long ahead of Bill Wyman getting bored with the whole thing and retiring.

Five songs by the five guys (plus one abused “member”) recorded at the famed Chess Records in Chicago during their first American tour.  Richards recently said that bands should record in the midst of tours when they’re “hot.”

There’s heat here from the jumping version of Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” to the bouncing instrumental “2120 South Michigan Avenue” led by the fine organ work of Ian Stewart who was bounced out of the band for the wrong look and “six was too many.”

Until his death in 1985, Stewart is all over Stones’ recordings and concerts but was never accorded band member status.  Pete Best wasn’t the only casualty of the marketing of these early “British Invasion Bands” and Oldham was as big a jerk and control freak as Epstein.

But back to the music.

Jagger drags and drawls his way distinctively through “If You Need Me,” written by the truly wonderful and under appreciated Wilson Pickett. “Confessin the Blues” can now be played along black blues classics without a bit of hesitation.  It’s that good.

The album makes you ache for stuff this true to the form.  Maybe on their new world tour they could tuck Five by Five into the middle of the set somewhere and do all five.  Of course, they’re only four now because the bass player doesn’t get to be a real member. Ah, show biz.

 The Animals

 the animals is here

the animals are back (both reissues by ABKCO Music and Records)

In the same 1964-65 period that the Stones did “Five by Five,” the Animals issued two mono EPs in the UK and were sprung from some of the same roots, black blues and r&b with maybe a bit more attention to folk.

At least one major folk song so old its exact roots are unknown and argued about:

The magnificent “House of the Rising Sun” propelled the Animals to a status approaching the Beatles and the Stones.  Really, this one hit — transferring a fallen life from a poor young girl to a downtrodden guy — provided Eric Burdon with a format that would remain unequalled in his career. Alan Price on organ was the perfect complement to Burdon’s vocal and the song sent the band’s popularity through the roof.

The band wasn’t as good musically as the Stones; their instrumental breaks were very ordinary and closer to pop.  They seem at times a bit cheesy now except on “I’m Crying” where Price’s organ is again strong. But boy that Eric could sing.

On the animals are back he does a great cover of the immortal Sam Cooke’s “Bring it on Home to Me.”  No one could do it as well as Sam, but Burdon came close and brought his own deep soulful style to it.

The Animals achieved a second surge of popularity in the USA (and Viet Nam) with “We’ve Gotta Get Out of this Place,” which inexplicably became an anthem at the dances of privileged college kids, and very understandably among grunts hoping not to die in Nam. Again, Burdon’s deep resonant voice is just perfect to express the longing of British working class kids.

He’s also strong on “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” when it seemed he might be a great blues singer in the making.  But thematically, this fine song seems now to have been a preview of Burdon’s self absorption with being the coolest guy in the world.  Didn’t happen, but boy could he sing.  And he still can.

(BTW, never could find out why they fixed the plural subject-verb agreement in the second album. Of course, if you view “The Animals” as a singular noun, then it’s the second album that’s ungrammatical. Oh well.)

* * * * * * * *

To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Brian Arsenault’s Short Takes: CDs by Lunasa and Olivia Foschi

Of Music Beyond Ireland and Back to Italy

By Brian Arsenault

LÚNASA

 Lúnasa with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra (Lúnasa Records)

Up the Irish. Up the rebels. I always used to like my cousin’s husband bellowing those calls to rising first thing in the morning.

To get your dose of real Irish instrumental music with St. Patrick’s day upon us, give a listen to Lúnasa (whistles, fiddle, pipes, etc.) with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra (Ireland’s national orchestra).

It’s all there: jaunty jigs, melancholy melodies, mad passion, soft beauty. A wall of sound created by traditional Irish acoustic instruments enhanced by the restrained but not understated playing of the orchestra. Phil Spector might dig it, if he digs anything these days.

There are wonderful moments on several selections when Lúnasa starts on its own for several bars and then the orchestra comes up behind in support. That very moment when the orchestra begins is just dazzling. Perfection.

The surprise of this album (for me at least) is the band taking listeners to Celtic regions beyond Ireland’s shore–Brittany in western France, the former kingdoms of Galicia and Asturias, still autonomous regions in northwest and northern Spain.

The “Breton Set” is one of the delights of the album.  It is akin to Irish music but somehow different, calling across centuries to one another.

But my favorite for spunk and joy is “Morning Nightcap”. That’s not an oxymoron, darlin,’ it’s Irish.

You can get this album on i-Tunes and such in time for St. Patrick’s Day but not till mid-April in CD form. Go figure.

And if you’re anywhere near Powell, Wyoming (is anything near Powell, Wyoming?) today, on the big day itself, you can see Lúnasa at Powell High School Auditorium. Try and figure.

Olivia Foschi

Perennial Dreamer (Olivia Foschi)

Olivia Foschi tells the listener to kick off shoes and pour a glass of wine. She wants the album “to take you to a comfortable, cozy place.” But I didn’t put the CD in the Bose to be comfortable and cozy. I’d like to be thrilled, dazzled, enchanted, maybe grabbed and shaken.

And at times, Olivia, you come close.

On “Bridge” you and the piano mastery of Miki Hayama chase each other and make a perfect match.

On “Legend of the Purple Valley,” you set the mood perfectly during the opening by singing notes only. We are among the violets.

In other places, even though you’re a match for the bevy of current female jazz singers in clarity, pitch and tone, real angel stuff, I think I’m hearing the self imposed limitations of extensive music schooling. Music school is great, I’m not against it, but have you noticed how many times they tell you what you can’t/shouldn’t/mustn’t do?

I just don’t hear a complete singing style of your own yet.  As a songwriter, though, you’re hitting a nice stride.  “Disillusionment,” for example. And “Secrecy and Lies.”

Take more chances.  Have you spent enough time in the clubs?  You were born and raised in the States but had the fortitude to serve an orphanage in Katmandu, gain a European education and study music in Rome.   Surely you don’t just want us to only get all cozy.

Just keep going and don’t get too comfortable.

To read more reviews, posts and columns from Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Short Takes: Of My Favorites in Twenty-Twelve

By Brian Arsenault

I really don’t feel comfortable calling a column like this “The Best of 2012.”  It’s not that I’m not opinionated enough to do so, it’s that integrity would require me to have listened to a whole lot more during the year.  Wouldn’t one have to hear just about everything to do an honest “Best of 2012”?  Oh well, let others worry about that.

If  I absolutely had to select an album of the year it would be Dreams of the San Joaquin (Blix Street).  Maia Sharp combines with her parents, Randy Sharp and Sharon Bays, and Johnny Cash songwriter Jack Wesley Routh to give us a piece of America and thus a better sense of all of America.  It’s a Steinbeck novel, an early Capra movie, a train whistle in the night.

Here are my other favorites from the year drawing to a close:

 Jazz

- Halie Loren’s Heart First (Justin Time). How can this singer of grace and style not be near the top of everyone’s list? Great phrasing, emotions that resonate not nauseate, humor, wit. I truly don’t think there’s anyone better.

- Cheryl Bentyne’s Let’s Misbehave: The Cole Porter Songbook (Summit Records). This is a master class in jazz singing, in Cole Porter, in the American songbook. Cheryl Bentyne can make magic with Manhattan Transfer and on her own. Special magic here.

- Graham Dechter’s Takin’ It There (Capri). Jazz electric guitar virtuoso. You’ve heard that before but this guy will take you there. And beyond. You feel the music imbedded so deep in the DNA.  In this case, by nature and nurture.

- Jesse Cook’s The Blue Guitar Sessions (Entertainment One Music). I know, two guitarists. But this is something completely different.  Softly stated, yes, but more accurately, lyrically stated. A world of its own inviting you to enter.

- Nik Bartsch’s Ronin (ECM).  In medieval Japan, Ronin were Samurai without masters.  That works here.  Smoothly flowing jazz funks to a frenetic pace. To quiet piano bars. There are spaces, gaps, silences. And wondrous sound.

 Non-Jazz

- Rickie Lee Jones’ The Devil You Know (Concord Records).  A long time. A lot of pain. A lot of courage. A lot of living. Not covers but reinterpretations that in several cases are more articulate, more profound, more evocative than the originals.

- All Purpose Blues Band’s Cornbread and Cadillacs (Catbone Music) because the traditions of Otis Redding, Sam Cook, all the Delta bluesmen, funk, soul, Neville Brothers, and Bourbon Street must continue to be there to renew and enrich our souls.

- Rolling Stones’ reissue of Some Girls Live in Texas 1978. (Eagle Rock Entertainment) Mick and the boys at the height of their powers. If you’re not sure you are comfortable with today’s geezers in concert, you will be reassured by this remarkable live album.

- Various artists, hell, many artists, on Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan.. This album of Bob Dylan songs was done for Amnesty International, and such collaborative efforts seldom get a lot of recognition. Well, it’s not actually a full blown work of art, critics sniff dismissively. But it you miss this, you miss some magnificent interpretations of Dylan’s work. Disc 2 alone is worth the price of admission.

- Mary Black’s Song from the Steeples (Blix Street) both in its own right and as a representative of a great year of music from Irish female singers.  Not sure what’s going on but it seems like a virtual renaissance of Irish singers. Of course, they’re always there, aren’t they. We just aren’t always listening.

- Martha’s Trouble’s A Little Heart Like You (Aisling).  There are new babies in our family, both arrived and on the way.  If there are newcomers in yours, this album of artfully done lullabies will please both babe and parents. Not sing-songy sweet to send you screaming from the room on a third play, but genuinely good music.

 DVD

- Ike & Tina On the Road 1971-72 (MVD Visual). Low quality video/audio in places can’t diminish the powerful birth of real superstar Tina Turner and innovator Ike Turner. A remarkable portrait of musical performing artists.

To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Short Takes: New CDs featuring Randy Sharp, Sharon Rays, Jack Routh and Maia Sharp

By Brian Arsenault

Randy Sharp, Sharon Rays, Jack Routh and Maia Sharp

 Dreams of the San Joaquin (Blix St. Records)

It seems to me that Dreams of the San Joaquin should be the birth of a band.  They are that good together, whatever their sterling individual credits and talents. And San Joaquin wouldn’t be a bad band name.

Throughout there are touches of Johnny Cash — Jack Routh penned several Cash songs; Linda Ronstadt, who has recorded the title song; even early Eagles.  As Ronstadt once said, there is (or was) a form of California Country music.  And Willie could record any number of songs here.  But the sound of this album is also uniquely attuned to the band’s members: the married Randy Sharp and Sharon Rays, daughter Maia  Sharp and family friend Routh.  They variously sing lead vocals and back up and harmonies and a sound emerges that has the sensitivity of C, S & N and the strength of  Willie and his Outlaws in their glory days.

Jack Routh, Maia Sharp, Sharon Rays, Randy Sharp

All have ties to the San Joaquin Valley which has seen Oakies and Arkies come, multi-generations of Mexican farm workers, and more surprising ethnicities including a substantial Portuguese population, the first Sikh place of worship in America and the only town in California, now gone, founded by African Americans.

Several of the eleven songs such as “Burn Day” and “Between the Ice and the Fire” (wish Cash was alive to cover this one) are about love lost or never realized. There are also echoes of Cash in “Beyond the Great Divide” which isn’t only about geography.

The separation brought on by poverty and the search for work and the too often hopeless dream of togetherness is brought to its highest artistic revelation in the title song:

I’m sending you some money — I wish it could be more

            But it’s harder than I thought to find the work I came here for.

The contradiction of a place so beautiful but lousy poor is aching and the longing to be together “in the life we dream about” even more so.  Randy Sharp’s understated yet touching vocals seem to have emerged from stoic men in the Dust Bowl era. And guest Louie Ortega beautifully singing the lyrics in Spanish as counterpoint to Sharp’s vocal on the final chorus makes more universal the experience of days, even years of want.

There’s a touch of Roy Orbison musically and lyrically on “New Way Out” wherein an exit from a relationship without pain is sought in vain.  And the cowboy harmonies remind you that there once was a form known as Country Western, some would argue it was the first form of Country music.

Maia Sharp has a distinctive quality to her voice that is featured on “A Home”.  More about that quality in the review of her own album below, but you’ll need to hear it for yourself if you never have before.

Maia’s Mom, Sharon Bays, lets us know that a bit of drink can make us merry, at least for a while, in “For Old Time’s Sake”. Old times and old timey music are represented on “Or So the Heart Remembers”:

Love just fell apart

            Or so the heart remembers.

In the end, though, however fine so many of the songs on this album, there’s a cumulative effect that satisfies at an even deeper level.  Though most have that as a goal, there are few albums that emerge as an entity, as a fully realized work of art. This one does.

Keep the band together.

* * * * * *                    * * * * * *                    * * * * * *

Maia Sharp

Change the Ending (Blix St. Records)

I agree with the title but let me start at the beginning:

Maia Sharp just has this really pleasing voice; smooth, clear, alluring, deep and throaty. The kind of voice you wish an early girlfriend had when you mostly talked on the phone.

So when she starts off with two keep-time-bouncing songs, “Me After You” and “The Middle,” I settled in like putting on the first comfortable old sweater of autumn and said ‘I’m really gonna like this.’ And I did. For the most part.

Maia Sharp

Musically and vocally Maia’s somewhere between Bonnie Raitt and Carole King.  But this is a better more rounded voice than either.  She writes about broken love, lost love, yearned for love, even rising above love.  Nothing wrong with that and she makes it all so believable.

Maybe therein lies the trouble. When the songs sound like they are all about your own (dreaded word coming) relationships, the (dreaded word) relationships have to be pretty damn interesting.  It’s hard to get outside yourself and by the end I was just a teeny bit bored, even though the lyrics are always intelligent, thoughtful even.

Only on one song does she seem to reach beyond herself and speak to the larger human condition.  “Standing Out In A Crowd” touches, with Janis Ian pathos, the problem of self consciousness and fear of not fitting in. Too bad in a way, since Maia wrote it, that the song’s already been someone else’s hit.

But I haven’t said enough good about this album.  It’s real good. Maia’s singing throughout is terrific and the band supports her in fine fashion. Guitarist Linda Taylor is a stand out.  And for the first half dozen songs this is a great love song album.

It’s just that it saves the dreary, rather self pity songs and an odd little instrumental remix of one of the album’s strongest songs, “Buy My Love,” for the second half.  And made me want to… change the ending.

To read more reviews, posts and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE. 

CD Review: Martha’s Trouble “A Little Heart Like You”

Martha’s Trouble

A Little Heart Like You (Aisling Records)

By Brian Arsenault

Martha’s Trouble, for the uninitiated ‘til now like me, is a husband and wife folk duo — Rob and Jen Slocumb — who had great critical success with their first album a few years ago, did the touring thing, released more albums with some success and then devoted some years primarily to their two young children.  A happy outcome of that kid commitment, besides presumably happier children, is their album of lullabies, to wit:  A Little Heart Like You.

The Slocumbs wrote several of the tunes here and interpreted some traditional lullabies as well.  The result is pleasing without being saccharine and, hey, we’re talking lullabies here.

Martha’s Trouble (Rob and Jen Slocumb)

If you had a musical cousin somewhere in the hill country, a sweet girl, a thoughtful girl, a sometimes sad girl, her singing would probably sound a lot like Jen’s. Rob’s deeply rooted acoustic guitar playing supports and enhances her voice throughout.

Fiddler Natalyn Weinstein is but one of several skilled players who lend a hand on gentle stringed instruments played gently.  The playing throughout seems as soft as a gentle hand, especially to one who spends most of his time hearing electric and brass.

The “standards” you know: “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,”  “You Are My Sunshine” (perhaps the best ever), “Hush Little Baby (Mockingbird)” and so on but you may never have heard them done as real music for children, as songs of some integrity unembellished by fake kid voices and tinkly instrumentation. Trust me, a kid would prefer to fall asleep to these versions.

“Goodnight Sweet Child” is an example of the same kind of quality in composition and execution in the songs the Slocumbs wrote themselves. “Little Heart” is a poetic notion with which to characterize a young child or babe. “Precious Love” typifies the whole album, a love song to their babies.

That’s what raises the album above the pretty or simply cute.  It is an expression of parental love and a good one.

A secular Yankee like me inhaled a bit deeply at the inclusion of “Jesus Loves Me” and “Bedtime Prayer.” Is that bravery on the part of the Slocumbs in an age when so many run away from any representation of faith?  Or is it simply an unselfconscious shot at hope for higher love for their kids in an all too often cold cruel world?

At least in their version of “Bedtime Prayer” they left out the verse I knew and recited nightly for many childhood years with the terrifying line about dying “before I wake.” Who, as a child, completely comprehended that phrase about God taking your soul to keep? Who does now?

I can’t close without noting that I like very much that the album credits include a thank you to businesses in Auburn/Opelika, Alabama that provided “support” in the making of the CD. The list includes an insurance agency, a chicken finger restaurant, a dentist and a salon. Local sponsors. Cool, huh?

If you have a baby or a young child in your family and maybe you can’t sing a note or plunk a chord or even if you can, get this for an early musical experience.  Fortunately, there’s a baby due in our family in August and I now already have a great gift for him. And his parents.

* * * * * *

To read more reviews and posts by Brian Arsenault, click HERE.

CD Review: Punch Brothers

Punch Brothers

Who’s Feeling Young Now (Nonesuch)

By Brian Arsenault

Punch Brothers’ new album, Who’s Feeling Young Now?, starts so strong. Poetic intelligent lyrics, deeply felt but restrained feelings in the vocals, especially strong fiddle playing by Gabe Witcher. In a time of computer beeps and annoying bongs and chirps of everything from coffee makers to cars to hip hop, there is a purity of rounded sound here that is as comfortable as old sneakers and jeans.

Punch Brothers

“Movement and Location” opens the album with all the fine qualities mentioned above.  “This Girl” follows with an electric pace carried by stringed instruments. The song’s a prayer for love and favor, or the favor of love.  Who does that? Asks for it, yes, but prays for it? Today? Not many in popular music outside of the Christian genre.

The song says “Gods ought to know how little to expect of people,” but the gods and me expected a lot of this band.

And I kept expecting a great deal right through “No Concern of Yours,” where the poetry is up to a Paul Simon standard:

“A word can break as easy as it’s spoken, snarled or sworn.”

And Jimmy Paige could play guitar on an electric cover of the title song, “Who’s Feeling Young Now?”

But then I began to consider that maybe these guys just lost their amps.  But no, they are a self proclaimed bluegrass band.  And just as I have felt at every bluegrass concert I have ever attended, no matter the quality of the musicians, it’s just . . . well . . . like the amazing Gary Oldman character in The Professional says of his idol Beethoven — that after those amazing beginnings, he does tend to get just a little bit boring. Or words to that effect.

It could be it’s nothing more than my need for percussion, somewhere, somehow.  I admit it’s a prejudice but it’s a good one, don’t you think?  Even a snare drum. Just a little.  But this is bluegrass, so maybe I don’t have a legitimate complaint.

The songs  seem to sound a lot alike musically and lyrically. And I can only take so much “can’t find love” stuff. Or is it that they can’t sustain love? Or a relationship.  Is this a Woody Allen movie?

By the time we get to “Flippen (The Flip)” I appreciate the break.  A pure Ozarks instrumental that does a funky little acid rock thing in the middle — not many can do that with acoustic instruments — and then flashes back to pure West Virginny to finish up.

It’s not that most of the songs don’t stay good.  “Hundred Dollars” beefs up the emotional impact of the album with the anger and force of emotion missing elsewhere. “Soon or Never” has a wonderful melancholy, amplified by the fiddle solo at the end.

It’s just that by now I feel like I have heard it all once, twice, three times. Enough.  Surely some other dynamic of life could come into play. I’m certainly not feeling young and I haven’t smiled once.

Photo courtesy of Punch Brothers.

CD Review: “Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International”

By Brian Arsenault

I am always a bit suspicious of organizations aligning themselves with art and artists, even one as “pure” as Amnesty International.  Organizations, you see, always have agendas and the only agenda artists should have is their art.

It might not be fair to say but I rather envision Amnesty International supporters as being among those booing Dylan long ago at Newport because he had the audacity to think great music could be coupled with instruments that are electrified.  Even though the liner notes deny that, sort of. Ultra lefties have their own problems with tolerance of viewpoints in disagreement with their own.

So the only reasonable thing to do then is to consider this massive tome of 75 songs –  a salute to the activism of Amnesty International and the music of Dylan — as a work of art, not simply a political statement.  On that basis, for a huge chunk of this work, there is a single word:

Magnificent.

Disc 2 alone can stand as a great album on its own. Speaking of lefties, Brit activist Billy Bragg demonstrates that there are some artists who simple “feel” Dylan at a higher level with his rendition of “Lay Down Your Weary Tune,” about being a prisoner of you own music. Dylan was never that, or at least of other people’s ideas of him and his work.

Earlier, on Disc 1, Patti Smith musically and thematically also evokes all that is best about Bob on “Drifter’s Escape.” You would have guessed that even before you heard this great version. It is Patti Smith after all.

But back to Disc 2:

Angelique Kidjo”s “Lay Lady Lay” may make you cry and it will certainly send a thrill through you. Is there anyone else in the world who can hit such pure notes. When you hear her sing you consider that there may have been a better time musically in the history of the world but you can’t imagine it.

Adele touches almost as deeply with a live recording of “Make You Feel My Love.” How does this kid have such command of a song, any song she sings.

Jackson Brown on Love Minus Zero (No Limit) provides a kind of tribute to Dylan phrasing without being merely imitative.

Jack’s Mannequin makes “Mr. Tambourine Man” as fresh as a spring stream in a meadow.

Lenny Kravitz laughs his way through “Rainy Day Women” but so did Dylan.

And there is Baez.  There had to be Joan Baez on this album. “Seven Curses” will make even the most ardent death penalty proponent consider James Joyce’s view that all executions are not only horrible but beyond the power that any government should have.

What girl should ever see the hangman’s limb bent by the weight of her father. You see, A.I., I’m suspicious but not unsympathetic.

All of the above on one of the four discs that comprise this collection.

There are delights and surprises on other discs though they may be less brilliant throughout.

Bryan Ferry convincingly touches on the youth and aging of Dylan’s generation with “Bob Dylan’s Dream” about the “first few friends I had.”  We really could get much older, the generation has discovered, hasn’t it?

Pete Townshend’s “Corrina, Corrina” made me smile. I’m not sure why.

Carly Simon brings a woman’s sensibility to “Just Like a Woman”. In fact, female renditions of Dylan tunes resonate throughout. Baez and Patti already mentioned along with the incomparable Kidjo. One of the delightful surprises here is Diana Krall’s “Simple Twist of Fate” wherein she brings out all the beauty of the song. A love song after all.

Disappointments?  Not many.  Sting does “Girl from the North Country”, a personal favorite, soft and sweet as it should be but he changes so many notes that by the end you almost think you are listening to a different song.  And Mark Knopfler continues the tradition begun with his work with Emmy Lou Harris of rendering himself and listeners nearly comatose on “Restless Farewell.”

As noted, though, there are nearly four score songs here and they couldn’t all be magnificent.

But almost.

To read more reviews and posts by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

 

CD Review: A Celebration of Woody Guthrie

Note of Hope, A Celebration of Woody Guthrie (429 Records)

By Brian Arsenault

So what do you do when reviewing the words of an icon set to music and recorded by other icons, legends and even Studs Terkel?  Well, first of all you wonder why a major recording of Woody’s words — and Woody was all about words even more than music — begins with an instrumental piece and a rather boring one at that.

The piece that should have begun the CD is “There’s a Feeling in the Music” if for no other reason that it’s principally by Pete Seeger, Woody’s contemporary and pal.  But there’s an even bigger reason.

Woody Guthrie

It’s probably the most poetic piece of music on the album, a reflection on “feeling” by an artist who hadn’t been corrupted by the notion that feeling is suspect in art. And it’s an ode to music in a way that is self defining by Woody’s words and sung with just the right feeling by Seeger, even if I do hate his banjo playing and all banjo playing.

There’s a lot more on this album to like.

Madeleine Peyroux

Madeleine Peyroux is of course terrific with a what everybody wants anthem “Wild Card in the Hole.”  Her smooth, smooth voice with Rob Wasserman’s bass perfect underneath.  And thematically there’s that wonderful dichotomy of despair and hopefulness that typifies Woody Guthrie’s work.

Lou Reed’s “The Debt I Owe” knows that most of us are in hock to life. This is a short story set to music about owing much more than you can ever pay back while wishing the debt was only about money.

Ani DiFranco

“Voice,” wonderfully sung/spoken by Ani DiFranco, is about alienation from popular culture wherein Woody’s words are about not being able to hear authentic voices in the movies or on the radio.  Imagine his horror today.  Woody is able to say “This is my language” only after talking to a waitress in a deli and listening to a customer.  At a higher level, this song poem is about an artist striving for what is true. More good Wasserman.

Studs is cast perfectly as the voice of a petty theft who just isn’t enjoying stealing as much as he used to, hoping that he will again “when this damn war is over.”  World War II is the setting here but pick a war, any war.  And for accusations you just can’t top “your a damn fool for being with a damn fool.”

And there’s more:

“Peace Pin Boogie” is a hilarious send up of political correctness in all its silly forms. “Boogie for Peace” may be an even more relevant line in terms of the ‘60s and certainly today than it was in Woody’s 1940s and ‘50s America.

Even St. Peter won’t let you in Heaven without your “peace pin on.”  Good stuff. And the converse is true too.  Remember when the Prez said you didn’t need an American Flag pin to be patriotic and shortly thereafter started wearing one.

The late Chris Whitley’s “On the High Lonesome” explores Woody’s notion of the nasty edges couples can take each other to when they “toss shit back and forth.” Gritty and insightful and Whitley delivers the goods like he’s lived them.

Jackson Browne

 

The CD closes with that comforting voice of Jackson Brown rising to sing “You Know the Night” about when Woody first met his second wife.  The first marriage evidently didn’t inspire him to such levels of poetry.  And poetry there is, with the yearning for someone who “hopes like I hope, sees the same kind of dreams I see.”

But 15 minutes? Really? Hey, Jackson, even with all the beautiful words here it just can’t help but get a little boring.  You know, kind of like that song you did about the roadies closing up after the show.  Didn’t that ever hit you?

They’re doing a four minute edit of “You Know the Night” for the radio and that’s probably a good idea.

The publicity release says Woody’s daughter, Nora Guthrie, conceived the project based on writings from Woody during his New York Period from 1942-1954 and asked Wasserman to lead the task. She chose well.  His ear and eye for the right artists for the pieces that match their skills was unerring. The accompanying musicians are fine throughout.

Our sense of Woody Guthrie is enriched and renewed. Good enough.

To read more reviews by Brian Arsenault click HERE.